Moreover, official documents suggest that Armenia’s Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports took steps in 2024-25 to allow Doping Space, a Yerevan-based entertainment company, to avoid additional penalties and fines that had accrued following the postponement and eventual cancellation of a 2023 concert by another internationally renowned artist.
While the dispute over the unused funds between the ministry and Doping Space remains unresolved, the company has secured new contracts from another government agency for an upcoming major international conference in the Armenian capital.
How Much Is ‘Subject To Return’
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service has been in correspondence with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports for more than a year to obtain data on the actual costs of Lopez’s August 3, 2025 concert, related contractual obligations and changes made to them in the process.
It shows that for nearly two months, the ministry has been unsuccessfully trying to recover more than 502 million drams (approximately $1.38 million) in unused funds from Doping Space.
The amount was left over from the 2.3 billion drams (approximately $6.3 million) allocated to the company to organize the concert. The unused portion of the money has not yet been returned to the state budget, although the contract stipulates that, in case of underspending, the government is entitled to demand the money back or recover it from the bank guarantee.
In addition to the unused $1.38 million, Doping Space has not yet paid the ministry 7.8 million drams (about $21,500) in fines incurred for late submission of reports or made a one-time payment of 24.4 million drams (about $67,000) required under the contract.
The ministry has also taken steps to ensure that Doping Space avoids paying fines for each day that the postponed concert did not take place. If calculated in full, those fines would amount to millions of dollars.
In August 2023, the Armenian government allocated 2.3 billion drams, or more than $6.3 million, to Doping Space to organize a concert by American rapper Snoop Dogg in Yerevan. The decision to organize the concert was widely criticized in Armenia because it came against the backdrop of an Azerbaijani blockade of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region whose status was then still contested by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
At a campaign rally ahead of a municipal election in Yerevan in September that year, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian dismissed the criticism, saying that organizing the concert sent a message that “no one should think that Armenia does not exist, that Armenia has been broken, and that Armenia has bent its knees” because “Armenia is alive and developing.”
On September 19, 2023, four days before Snoop Dogg’s planned concert, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive that forced the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh to flee to Armenia. The American rapper’s concert was postponed amid the unfolding refugee crisis and fears of further tensions with Azerbaijan.
The concert organizer, Doping Space, did not return the $6.3 million it had received from the government as the postponement continued indefinitely. Meanwhile, the grant agreement stipulated that, in case of a missed deadline, Doping Space would have to pay a penalty of 0.5 percent of the amount allocated to the company for each working day of delay – or 11.5 million drams (around $31,600).
In February 2024, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports and Doping Space amended the grant agreement, setting the new deadline for the concert as 2024, but mentioning no specific date. When the concert again failed to take place in 2024, the ministry was unable to recover either the 2.3 billion drams allocated for its organization or the fines that had accrued because of the delay.
In February 2025, Education, Science, Culture and Sports Minister Zhanna Andreasian announced that the ministry had applied to the company to recover the funds allocated from the state budget and was awaiting its response.
Negotiations between Doping Space and the ministry continued until the end of July 2025, when it became known that American singer Jennifer Lopez would come to Armenia instead of Snoop Dogg under the same program.
The concert took place on August 3, 2025, at the Republican Stadium in Yerevan. Before that, the parties amended the contract, essentially eliminating the bank guarantee for the event and providing the company with a way to avoid fines.
American singer Jennifer Lopez’s concert in Yerevan, August 3, 2025.
The government first changed the provisions governing the collection of fines and penalties for unfulfilled obligations. In particular, the ministry agreed that there would be no bank guarantee from which it could collect fines for delays or shortcomings in organizing the concert.
Another provision of the same regulation stipulated that fines could be collected from amounts payable to the company as a result of the event. Here, too, the government’s options were limited, since the ministry had transferred the entire amount allocated for organizing the concert to Doping Space back in 2023.
How Much In Fines, Penalties Accrued During Concert Postponement?
According to the contract, the fine for each day that the event was not held was 0.5 percent of the allocated 2.3 billion drams. When multiplied by the number of working days, the fine owed by Doping Space would have amounted to more than 1.669 billion drams (about $4.6 million) in the first eight months of 2025 alone.
Asked whether it had paid any of the fines and penalties for the days the concert did not take place, the company only replied that it had “submitted financial and substantive reports on the organization of the concert to the ministry in a prescribed manner.”
The ministry did not answer why it did not pursue the collection of the fines and penalties specified in the contract or why it agreed to eliminate the bank guarantee without first receiving those amounts.
The ministry briefly explained the reasoning behind the decision, saying that the agreement was signed just two days before the concert and that there was no need to use a bank guarantee.
No Recovery Yet Of Unused Funds From Event Organizer
Of the 2.3 billion drams allocated to organize Lopez’s concert, Doping Space spent 1.816 billion drams (about $5 million). At least, that is the amount the ministry considered to be justifiable spending.
The company saved the remaining 502 million drams but has not returned the money to the state. At the same time, the ministry’s response does not make clear whether the amount simply remained unspent or whether its reported expenditure was considered unsubstantiated.
In addition, the ministry is demanding that the company pay a fine of 7.8 million drams (about $21,500) for late submission of reports, as well as 24.4 million drams (about $67,000) in a one-time payment required under the contract.
On June 30, the ministry applied to the company for the return of the unused funds, the fine, and the lump-sum payment — a total of 534 million drams, or approximately $1.47 million.
Six weeks later, Doping Space filed objections to those demands, which the ministry is currently considering.
While the ministry could have recovered those amounts from the bank guarantee had it retained one, one of the options now for recovering the money is through the courts.
Last year, days before Lopez’s Yerevan concert, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reported on what appeared to be suspicious inflation of the concert budget in various areas.
The concert of American signer Jennifer Lopez at the Republican Stadium in Yerevan, Armenia, August 3, 2025.
An examination of the summary of the financial report submitted by Doping Space to the ministry shows that the spending categories and amounts criticized a year ago were indeed inflated.
For example, the government had earmarked 121 million drams (more than $330,000) for service staff, but only 105 million drams (nearly $290,000) were ultimately spent.
Millions of drams were also allocated for a number of services that were ultimately not needed, including a transport operations manager with a budget of 2.5 million drams (nearly $6,900), and a manager responsible for greeting the artist at the airport and providing arrival services with a budget of 1.3 million drams (nearly $3,600).
A total of 9 million drams (about $24,700) was earmarked but not spent on the stage and related equipment, 15.3 million drams (over $42,000) on concert-organizing equipment, and 31.2 million drams (about $85,700) on marketing services.
A year ago, questions were also raised about spending on food for locker-room staff, which amounted to more than 3.8 million drams (about $10,400). No money was ultimately spent in that category.
Assuming that the government’s allocation of 2.3 billion drams under the grant agreement is the basis for the calculation, and that the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports’ figure of 502 million drams in unused funds is accurate, it turns out that the government had approved a budget at least 22 percent higher than the actual expenditure.
Doping Space did not answer RFE/RL’s Armenian Service’s questions about the liabilities and fines incurred or whether they had been paid to the state.
In April 2026, the company’s director, Hayk Simonian, gave an interview to Armenia’s Public Television, in which he said that almost half of the amount provided to the company had been paid to the state in taxes and that the economic benefits from tourists visiting Armenia for the concert were greater than the amount provided.
“I wouldn’t consider the concert expensive, I would consider it to be of high value, but, most importantly, justifiable,” Simonian said.
The company’s 2025 financial report is not available on the Doping Space website, making it impossible to determine how much revenue the company generated from ticket sales for the concert.
New Contracts Worth Nearly $10 Million
Disputes between Armenia’s Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports and Doping Space over unreturned funds have not prevented the government from entrusting the company with another large-scale event.
According to the state procurement system, the Ministry of Environment has already signed contracts worth 3.5 billion drams, or more than $9.6 million, with Doping Space for COP17 – the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is scheduled to take place in Yerevan on October 19-30.
Under the contracts, the company is to organize the event and provide transportation, audiovisual and advertising services, an information campaign, and procurement of various items.
The contract was signed through a single-party procurement procedure, a practice that has drawn widespread criticism in Armenia under successive governments.
Moreover, as was the case with the concert, the government will provide 90 percent of the funding to the company in advance and only 10 percent after the event, following the submission of reports.
Doping Space was founded in 2023, a month before the decision was made to organize the Snoop Dogg concert.
The company’s stakeholder was Makar Petrosian, the son of the MAP company founder and former lawmaker from Armenia’s former ruling Republican Party, Aleksan Petrosian.
Both are being investigated under a law that allows law-enforcement authorities to confiscate assets of former state officials deemed to have been acquired illegally.
Five months after Doping Space was founded, its initial stakeholder, Makar Petrosian, transferred 100 percent of his stake in the company to Hayk Simonian.
